Support

Biome™

Carl Crossgrove describes his Biome typeface family as “both futuristic and organic, with a sense of calm.” He recalls, “My first sketches showed a globular, amorphous alphabet derived from superellipses. At the same time, I was sketching a rectangular, vaguely calligraphic sans serif design, on which I made the notation ‘square, futuristic, mechanical.’ The two threads eventually joined in one typeface, incorporating many of these contrasting qualities.”

Biome (bi as in binary + ome as in home) grew out of a succession of unrelated typographic experiments. Crossgrove says, “I wanted to see what resulted from subtracting superellipses from each other.” After Crossgrove had synthesized several abstract concepts and influences, he proceeded to survey futuristic or rectilinear typefaces, including the Eurostile, Neuropol, Rogue Sans, Handel Gothic, and Korataki designs.

He observes, “Some of these faces were drawn within an unbending rectangular grid, others were developed primarily for display sizes, or were based on the ‘Grotesk’ character structure. I saw that by retaining a softer demeanor, with generous character spacing, Biome would accommodate a wider range of sizes and applications.” He adds, “I looked at mid-20th century modern furniture and architecture, automobile styling and even leaf shapes.” After successive design refinements and blending, the simplified, superelliptical design with a large x-height, squared bowls and soft diagonal terminals emerged.

A senior type designer at Monotype Imaging, Crossgrove has been obsessed with letters since learning to read at the age of two. Born in Mexico and raised in central Connecticut, his fascination emerged in early chalk-drawn alphabets on his family’s driveway and giant letters cut from paper. Later in his youth, Crossgrove dabbled in display lettering that was influenced by comic book art, record album covers and the Art Nouveau resurgence of the 1970s. As he grew older, he discovered classical type and lettering, and his typographic interests deepened.

Crossgrove has drawn a variety of typefaces ranging from the Reliq and Origami display designs to the Beorcana and Mundo Sans typeface families. His work for Monotype Imaging also takes him into the realm of custom font development and non-Latin scripts.

Biome’s soft corners and distinctive character shapes make the family a natural for branding, packaging and advertising applications as well as movie titles, gaming and other interactive graphics.

The name Biome? Biomes are climatically and geographically similar climatic conditions, such as communities of plants, animals and soil organisms – basically an ecosystem. Biome is an apt name for a typeface that melds design influences from the myriad aspects of modern life.

The Biome superfamily includes narrow, regular and wide subfamilies – each with seven weights and an italic complement – for a total of 42 styles. The family is also available as a suite of OpenType Pro fonts, allowing for the automatic insertion of small caps, ligatures, old style figures and fractions. Pro fonts also include an extended character set that supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages.

Licenses for desktop fonts

A typical desktop font EULA will allow you to install the font on your computer for use with authoring tools including word processors, design tools and other applications that permit font selection. Fonts can also be used for creation of print documents, static images (JPEG, TIFF, PNG) and logos. The cost of a desktop font license is determined by the number of workstations on which the font is to be used.

Licenses for Fonts.com Web Fonts subscriptions

The Fonts.com Web Fonts license provides access to a selection of fonts for use on websites for use with CSS@font-face. Font delivery from our global network is available through all subscriptions – even our free plan. Some plans include the option to self-host, access to desktop fonts, and use of our FontExplorer X font manager and Typecast design application. The price of a plan is determined by its pageview allowance and other features included.

Licenses for mobile apps

A mobile app license permits the embedding of a font into the iOS, Android or Windows Phone mobile platforms for a single title and a set number of app installations. You can view and modify the installation limit from the cart. App installations can be spread out across the platforms your app is available for. A new license is not required to cover updates to an app, however installations of newer versions of your app do count toward your installation limit.

Licenses for electronic publications (eBooks)

An electronic publication license can be used for the embedding of fonts into electronic documents including e-books, e-magazines and e-newspapers. A license covers only a single title but is valid for the full operating life of that title. Every issue of an e-magazine, e-newspaper or other form of e-periodical is considered a separate, new publication. Format variations do not count as separate publications. If a publication is updated and distributed to existing users, a new license is not required. However, updated versions issued to new customers are defined as new publications and require a separate license.

Server licenses

Server licenses authorize the installation of a font on a server that is accessed by remote users or website visitors. These licenses are commonly used by Web-based businesses providing goods that are personalized by its users such as business cards, images with captions and personalized merchandise. Users are not allowed to download the font file and the font may not be used outside the server environment. The font may not be employed for a software as a service (SaaS) application in which the service is the actual product and not the means of providing the product.
Server licenses cover a set number of CPU cores on production servers (development servers are not counted) on which the font is installed. The license is valid for 1 year.